Troy Denning - The Summoning

Leaving Dureth to skulk along behind the crest and watch the enemy, Aubric and Rhydwych slipped down the slope and led the Swords along a parallel course. Soon enough, the ridge fell to a bare seven feet, and the enemy company streamed out beyond the shoulder to the line of decomposing birds and rabbits that marked the Deadwall. Aubric signaled his company to wait.

On the plain, the ruffle had closed to within four hundred paces of Rocnest. Though it was impossible to tell whether the invisible newcomers had seen the enemy, the phaerimm were making no secret of their presence. They stopped at the Deadwall only long enough for one of their number to run his four hands through a spell, creating a shimmering half-disk of greenish light.

"Four hands! No wonder we couldn't find the spell!" whispered Rhydwych.

The first two phaerimm pressed themselves to the shimmering doorway and melted through it, their bodies spreading across one side, then oozing out the other. Aubric grimaced. The slow process precluded a mad dash to take the enemy from behind. They would have to fight for the doorway and hold it, like an army claiming a crucial bridge.

The other phaerimm floated through the portal one after the other, leaving the illithids and beholders to herd the mindslaves through. Arrogant as always in their power within the Sharaedim, they were not even worried about being attacked from behind-an unfortunate testament, Aubric realized, to how little damage the Swords had truly inflicted on their enemies.

By the time the last phaerimm had crossed the barrier, the fast-moving newcomers had reached the base of Rocnest-or at least their riffle had. In front of the tor, a steady progression of birds began to take wing as invisible warriors fanned out to set up an advanced defense line.

The phaerimm huddled together arguing, filling the air with strange whistles and angry gestures. After a few wasted moments, they returned to the Deadwall and created nine more shimmering portals. The beholders and illithids began to shove mindslaves through en masse, while the thornbacks worked frantically to arrange them into battle ranks. Aubric could not help smiling. It was the first time he had seen anyone disrupt a phaerimm plan. The newcomers seemed eager to press. A dozen golden meteors arced away from Rocnest, landing short of the phaerimm lines, but exploding into huge curtains of amber fire. "That's Vhoorflame!" hissed Rhydwych.

Aubric raised a finger to his lips, drawing an irritated-but silent-scowl. He did not take offense, for he understood the excitement that had led to her exclamation. Vhoorflame was a specialty of Evermeet's fleet mages, invented for the rare occasions when the island nation found it necessary to defend itself at sea.

A stiff wind-no doubt magical-rose behind the flames and drove it toward the Blazevale. The mindslaves grew agitated and more difficult to arrange, angering the phaerimm enough that they killed a handful as an example. That only sent the others into a panic, and several dozen turned to flee through the portals back into the Sharaedim.

A pair of the smaller phaerimm left the group and called up an opposing wind that stopped the Vhoorflames three hundred paces from the Deadwall. When the blaze continued to burn, they called rain down from a clear sky. The water merely turned to steam. They used a ground-moving spell to flip a huge wall of dirt back onto the fire. The Vhoorflames continued to burn, consuming the dirt as though it were coal. The fire began to advance again.

Finally, one phaerimm tried to dispel the magic that had created the fire curtain. Normally, dismissing the spell of a fleet mage was no easy task, but the phaerimm were far more than normal magic-users. The creature had barely stopped waving its arms before a section of flame faded, leaving a thirty foot breach in the blazing curtain.

A blinding bolt of silver fire came streaking through the gap to catch the phaerimm in the torso. The thing erupted in a dazzling flash, hurling thorns and arms thirty feet into the air.

"In the name of Angharradh!" hissed Aubric, turning to Rhydwych. "What manner of spell was that?" Rhydwych only gestured to the plain, where a robed man stood with a black staff in one hand. Aubric was just starting to make out the shadow of a thick beard when another ball of Vhoorflame streaked down to seal the gap in the fire curtain.

"It appears our help may not be needed," whispered Rhydwych.

"1 pray we will be so lucky," said Aubric, "but we must be ready. Prepare the eye shield."

"There is no harm in being prepared." Rhydwych turned away to join her small cluster of Lordly Wands.

If the newcomers thought the destruction of one phaerimm would discourage the others, they were badly mistaken. The creatures merely spread out and floated forward in a line, then dispelled the entire wall of Vhoorflame at once.

This time, there were no streams of silver fire, only a flurry of lightning and golden bolts. The phaerimm vanished inside nine columns of roaring magic, each one pelted by such a tempest of spells that the ground split and the sky shook. One creature spun madly around and dropped in a heap of gashed flesh, but the others floated firm where they were, returning the attacks in kind.

A long rank of wizards-some looked human, others elf- was approaching through the fading smoke, all visible now that they had attacked. They fell in twos and threes, or sometimes just vanished into blood and smoke. Fearing his allies were not as well-prepared as he'd thought, Aubric longed to call out to them to change tactics, for he and his Swords had discovered the hard way that spells hurled at phaerimm had a nasty habit of ricocheting back at the caster. On the other hand, there was value in keeping the thornbacks busy, and perhaps that was all the newcomers intended. Clearly, they had come with a plan-and at least a few surprises.

Aubric tried to find the bearded figure again, but quickly realized it was hopeless. Deciding the time had come for Evereska to unveil a surprise of her own, he stood and drew his sword. "Arrows and spells!" he yelled. "Loose at will, slow advance!"

Bowstrings thrummed the air, sending a wall of hissing death down into the mindslaves trapped against the Dead-wall. The first volley and most of the second dropped the illithids before they had a chance to whirl and use their mind blasts against the company's spellcasters. The Lordly Wands hurled a few fireballs and ice storms to keep the enemy off balance, but eight of the dozen remained quiet and assumed positions in the first rank of advance.

When the beholders finally recovered and turned their death-dealing eyes toward the invaders, Rhydwych called, "Eye shield!"

Together, the Wands uttered an incantation and poured a handful of powdered silver to the ground. The air in front of them shimmered with mirror like brilliance, and the beholders' rays ricocheted off in all directions. Aubric's archers took aim at the eye tyrants and waited, then, when the creatures spun their big magic-dispelling eyes around to dispel the eye shield, they loosed their arrows. Most of the beholders dropped to the first volley. The handful that survived perished in the second.

The confused mindslaves, now on their own, turned to meet the attack in a jumble.

"Spare them if you can, but be quick!" Aubric cried. "We must show our friends at the Rocnest how to kill phaerimm!"

Rhydwych and her Wands unleashed a flurry of spells, dropping a full third of the mindslaves into a deep slumber. Another twenty fell into helpless fits of laughter, and dozens more dropped their weapons and simply wandered off. A handful went blind and fell to their knees screaming. Unfortunately, a full two-dozen warriors remained to block the Swords' advance.

Aubric led the crash into them, using his elven sword to parry the wild axe of a vacant-eyed human, then slipping inside to knock the man unconscious with a mailed fist to the jaw. As he spun away, he snatched the fellow's axe and hurled it into a charging bugbear, dived under the monster's legs, and came up flinging sand into the eyes of three elves standing in front of the portal.